


Airborne

by kittengriffin (Shadaras)



Category: Neopets
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Injury Due to Falling, Trying (and Failing) to Fly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-22
Updated: 2009-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:27:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24039619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/kittengriffin
Summary: Keben Cian has always loved heights. If he could fly, he'd be the happiest boy. Unfortunately, he hasn't been blessed with wings—but that doesn't stop him from trying to make some.





	Airborne

Keben stood on the roof of his house, trying to breathe steadily. He knew that his friends, both brown Uni, were staring up at him. Distantly, he heard Cole’s wings fluttering nervously. The Unis didn’t like him being on the roof, mostly because they’d been forbidden to go up there due to being too heavy. Of course, Keben had been forbidden as well, though in his case it was to keep his mother from worrying. It was just that Keben chose to ignore his mother’s orders.

Raising his gaze, the white Zafara looked over Central. Early-morning light made the towering buildings more beautiful than usual. Their windows sparkled in the new sun, and their edifices looked more like blocky mountains than claws. Around them, a few robots glittered in the sky, flies buzzing around a carcass.

“Are you going to do it?” Connor asked impatiently. “If you don’t, we’ll have gotten up early for nothing.”

“Give me a second,” Keben called back. He pulled at the straps crisscrossing his chest, carefully maneuvering the low-tech wings he’d built. Strapping them onto his arms had been the hardest part of all this, since he’d had to carry them up to the roof. After assuring himself that his preparations were as good as they were going to get, he spread his arms, letting the cloth attached to them catch the wind. He’d tried this on the ground before, and if he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself still on the ground, still testing.

But now was the real thing. Ignoring the fluttering of his stomach and the rapid pace of his heart, Keben stepped to the edge of the roof. He avoided looking at the ground. At this point, looking down would mean aborting his flight. With one last deep breath to try and calm himself, Keben crouched down. A moment later, he jumped into the air, feeling the wind beneath him, catching on his cloth wings.

Then Keben heard something snap, and he screamed as he started falling. He heard wings beating below him, heard Cole and Connor shouting to each other, but mostly, he couldn’t hear anything but the wind all around him and the pounding of his heart. A moment later, he hit something hard, and then he felt nothing at all.

* * *

Concentrating, Keben reached for the smooth wood of the banister. He could just barely reach the wood if he stood on his toes, and only the wild waving of his tail kept him from falling before he grabbed hold. He jumped, pulling himself up until he could hook a leg over the banister. He hung there for a moment, catching his breath, before he pulled himself the rest of the way on.

“Get down from there!”

The admonishment from Mother just made Keben shrug. Pushing himself up so that he could stand, he balanced on the banister for a moment before hopping down onto the floor. Mother swept him up in her arms, ruffling his hair. “Mom, it’s fine,” he said, struggling to get free from her embrace. “I won’t get hurt.”

“You could have.” She set him down, straightening his shirt. “Now, go and clean up. It’s dinnertime.”

Keben brightened, running off before Mother could say anything else.

* * *

The darkness receded slightly, and he could hear people crying. Someone was talking, too, but while he could recognize the deep tones of his father’s voice, he couldn’t make out the words. He strained for them, and the darkness pulled him back down.

* * *

Cole stood as still as he could, letting Keben climb on his dark brown back. “If Marian finds out about this...”

“We’re all toast. I know.” Keben jumped, grabbing for the gutter of the roof. Cole moved aside as he came down, letting the Zafara crash into the ground. As he stood back up, Keben continued. “Dad would be just as bad.”

They kept trying, and eventually Keben grabbed hold of the gutter and levered himself onto the roof. Cole flew up, joining Connor. The lighter, ruddier, Uni had flown up while Keben worked on getting a grip on it. As Keben lay on the roof, panting, Connor nudged him. “Climb up a tree next time. It’d be easier.”

“Now you tell me,” Keben muttered, slowly rising and following the Unis to the peak of the roof. They were at least thirty feet off the ground now, and he looked down, fascinated by how different everything looked from above. The shed’s roof was covered in dirt and leaves that he’d never been able to see from the ground, or even through the leaves of the trees he’d climbed. There weren’t many trees near his house; Mother preferred bushes and flowers. But Dad had kept some of giant trees, and Keben climbed them.

The tree wouldn’t do for what he was planning, though. A grin split Keben’s face as they reached the peak of the roof and the wind hit him. He laughed, turning to his friends. Cole had a smile on his face, but Connor didn’t seem to understand how wondrous this was. But then, the Unis could fly on their own, and even if their wings weren’t strong enough to let them fly far or high yet, they could go farther than he could.

As he looked over Central, the shining buildings silhouetted against the bright sky, Keben decided he was going to fly, one way or another. And if he could manage it, he’d do it with his own body, not by letting his friends carry him to the clouds. He smiled, plans already forming in his mind.

* * *

“He’s healing nicely, Mrs. Cian.”

His heart leapt in his chest as those words pierced the darkness, and he heard his mother reply, her soft voice stained with tears. As he listened, unable to make out the words, a buzzing overtook his ears and the darkness claimed him once more.

* * *

Keben wrapped cloth around the wooden pole, taking care to ensure there was no room for the pole to slip out. He held the cloth in place, quickly sewing it into a tube around the wood. He left one end free, and once he’d finished sewing the wrap on, he took the beam over to the rest of the wing. Keeping the spar in place, he hammered a nail through the main beam and into the wood. Then, he carefully pulled the loose end taut around the main strut before sewing it into place on the tube.

All the movements were practiced now, and he moved back to repeat the process. He needed another five bars before he could stretch the main cloth over the wings. And even then, he’d need to make something to attach to his tail. He’d asked Connor for ideas on how to do that, and the Uni had disappeared as Keben went into his workshop. He was fairly sure his parents knew what he was doing, if not why. He was hoping to keep that a secret until he’d succeeded.

He grinned, moving his hands without really thinking about it. They’d be so proud of him, once he showed him he could fly.

* * *

He hurt. Mostly his shoulders and back, but all of his body at least a little. His right leg felt numb, but it still ached. He groaned, and heard hooves on a tile floor. “Keb?” Cole’s voice, dusty, deep, gentle. “You awake?”

Keben opened his eyes, then shut them again at the intense light.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Cole sounded satisfied. One of us should be, Keben thought sourly, taking inventory of his body. It felt like he was all in one piece, even if he couldn’t get himself to move without pain. He could hear machines humming all around him, and it felt like there was something in his arm. Slowly opening his eyes, he tried to deal with the light.

At about the time he could open his eyes without them hurting, he heard a stampede of footsteps heading towards him, along with excited voices. He smiled, recognizing them. Mother, Dad, and little Caitlyn. The hooves were probably Connor’s. As they reached him, he let their babble pass over him. It sounded like there was about as many words of admonishment as of joy. Before too long, however, a doctor came in and shooed everyone out, allowing Keben to slip back into sleep.

* * *

Mother pushed his wheelchair past the window as she took him out of the hospital. Keben looked away, staring instead at the plain walls of the room. The longing for heights was still there, but fear now held an equal place in his heart. Mother didn’t seem to understand this, even though he’d tried to explain it to her. She kept thinking that his love of heights was still there, and to help him forget the trauma of the hospital, she should give him every chance possible to look out at the world from a high window.

It made Keben feel sick, more than anything else. Dad understood it, but Dad was at work. Cole and Connor couldn’t push the wheelchair, and Mother didn’t trust him to wheel himself around. But none of it would’ve been truly annoying if she hadn’t brought him past every single window they encountered.

With each window they passed, the mindless chatter between the Uni twins was driven from his mind. He wanted to look out. Wanted to see the ground so far below him, the tiny dots of people trudging along the paths with sparkling robots cruising around to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. But each time he saw how high he was, the warnings and lectures his mother had given him over and over repeated themselves in his mind, their effects finally felt.

He didn’t need those warnings now, he thought, turning away from yet another window. He didn’t want anything more than to be safely on the ground, away from the threat of falling.

But for those few seconds before he’d begun to fall—

A grin split Keben’s face, and he looked up at the identical corridors of the hospital once more. Oh, those seconds had been glorious. There was nothing he wanted more than to feel that joy again.


End file.
